


the rising sun

by spnhell



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Depressed Castiel, Depression, Eventual Happy Ending, Happy Ending, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Supportive Dean, abuse of sunrise metaphors, non-graphic depiction of suicide attempt, non-linear writing, wow these tags are bleak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-02-02 17:22:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12730968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spnhell/pseuds/spnhell
Summary: “Babe?”Warm arms circle him from behind, a ghost of a breath against his neck.“What are you doing?”Cas stands at the window, peering into the abyss, wondering whether he’s looking outside or in.“I’m waiting.”“What for?”“For the sun to rise.”





	the rising sun

“Cas? Cas!”

It’s a strange thing, really. The passing of time.

“Oh my god, no. Nononono.”

The way it ebbs and flows, always moving, surging forward. Ticking away at a constant speed and yet passing by in a flash when really all you need is more.

“Breathe Cas! Fuck, just, fuck.”

It’s life’s only constant. More so than a heartbeat. Never faltering, never stilling. Never pausing to let you catch your breath.

“That’s it baby, breathe, just breathe with me.”

Dragging out in long slow seconds that leave you feeling stretched until you realise that it’s only been an instant, a passing drop in the endless wheel of the current of time.

“Baby can you hear me? Open your eyes, come on, look at me.” 

How in one moment one person can be wishing it forward, counting down the seconds until it’ll all just stop, while all another wants is for it to just go back, to take the clock and force the seconds hand backwards to try and erase what’s already been done.

“Cas? Stay awake, no, stay awake with me. Cas!” 

It’s a funny thing. Time.

 

* * *

 

 

Cas stands at the window, staring out at the starless sky.

It’s peculiar, he thinks, how one night they can be shining bright and visible, and how the next they’ll have been completely swallowed by the darkness. He wonders where they go on those nights. If they flare so hot they burn themselves out, or if they disappear into the night and spread their map across the skies of other galaxies, ones that are far less of a tragedy than his own.

“Cas?”

The voice is softened by sleep; sharpened by the realisation that the cold sheets beside him hold no lingering warmth.

“You coming back to bed?”

Cas stands at the window, clutching a mug of coffee long gone cold.

He knows it’s stupid, really, to think of his life as a tragedy. As an insignificant star headed for extinction. It’s just another dark cloud on the horizon of his restless mind.

“Babe?”

Warm arms circle him from behind, a ghost of a breath against his neck.

He shivers, lost in the velvet of the night, the all-consuming pressure suffocating down on them. He closes his eyes against it, tries to ground himself in the steady thump of the chest at his back. But the black vapours of the night have already found a way into his heart, settling there in amongst the ventricles, curling and waiting, just waiting for the right moment to diffuse through every pore until his blood runs onyx.

“What are you doing?”

Cas stands at the window, peering into the abyss, wondering whether he’s looking outside or in.

“I’m waiting.”

“What for?”

“For the sun to rise.”

 

* * *

 

 

Dean had never wanted him to buy this house, out in the country, mist pooling in the fields and bathing the dawn in an eerie light.

His gaze had lingered over the lake out the back, concern and trepidation pulling on his brow as he watched Cas wander out over the jetty, the water rippling. It was morse code, each line a cry for help that Dean wasn’t sure how to read.

Cas had caught him looking, eyes dulled storm grey like the water surrounding him, hair ruffling softly in the wind. It was cold, Dean could see the goosebumps rising on Cas’s flesh.

“It won’t be like last time Dean.”

Dean bit his lip, felt the ground firm beneath his feet. Solid, unyielding. Like him, in its own way.

He’d looked back over his shoulder at the house. It was tired, jaded, unsteady in its foundations. It was broken and imperfect and yet the haunting shafts of light still made it beautiful. He could see why Cas wanted it. He sighed, his breath escaping in a cloud that was barely imperceptible in the fog already huddling around the water.

“It won’t be good for us, Cas. For you.”

But Cas had just smiled, cracked around the edges like the splintered door frames in the dust-filled hall.

“We can fix it up. Together.”

There was too much hope there, too much doubt forced away in a swallow. Dean should have known then that the tremble carrying on Cas’s voice was nothing to do with the chill of the breeze skating over the lake.

Often Dean wonders if Cas had ever even been talking about the house at all.

And he wonders if Cas knows that when Dean looks at him, he sees what he saw the first time they walked inside that house. The faults and the flaws, the damage around the edges.

And yet still a way to make it beautiful again.

 

* * *

 

 

Cas remembers a time when watching the sunrise meant laying in bed as Dean stumbled to the bathroom, hair a mess and pants hanging low on his hips, the peak of orange on the horizon nothing next to the strip of skin showing across Dean’s lower back, soft in the sleepy warmth of morning.

“I’m coming back, you know.”

Dean’s voice is chipped, almost broken under the burden of sadness. Cas cradles the phone in one hand as he sits on the jetty, toes barely brushing the cold water underneath. He wonders why Dean gets to break when he’s still here, surrounded by nothing and feeling nothing.

Cas’s voice is small, lost in the open space around him.

“Why?”

He hears Dean’s voice hitch, and closes his eyes against the onslaught of memory that it brings. He’s not sure whether the absence of pain says something about Dean or something about himself.

“Because I promised you I would.”

Cas remembers a time when Dean’s promises were whispered against the back of his neck, breathed into his skin, nestled between his shoulder blades as he warmed his feet against Dean’s shins.

“But you left.”

His feet are cold now, cutting a path through the still water. He wonders if his words sound as numb as his nerves.

Cas wants to say he’s mad, to tell Dean that he doesn’t even want him to come back. He wants to rage and scream into the night. But it’s hard to feel angry when underneath all the layers of apathy there’s nothing but a gaping hole where Dean used to be, a gnawing sense of guilt that’s eating away at him.

There’s only so many lies he can tell himself before the kindling of self-destruction begins to flame and burn.

“Cas?”

He realises he hasn’t heard a word that Dean’s said.

“I’m still here.”

Dean exhales noisily, and Cas can practically smell the cigarette smell drifting across the the phone line. It makes him ache.

“You okay?”

_ It makes him ache. _

Cas looks out at the lake, at the reflection of the moon spilling white across its surface.

He closes his eyes as his hand falls to his lap, the blinking light of the phone screen glaring up at him. He pictures Dean next to him, leaning back on one hand as the other pinches a cigarette between thumb and forefinger. He tries to remember the way it smelled, the way it tasted in Dean’s mouth. That ache, that hint of something; it’s the first thing he’s felt in a long time. He wants to grab onto it, pull it forward until it’s more than just a flicker, until it fills that cavity in his chest and makes him curl around the agony.

But it’s gone, and there’s nothing now but the sound of his breath coming in pants as he clenches his eyes shut and wills something, anything, forward. Dean’s question rings in his ears, blaring at him over and over when he can’t even remember what it means to be okay anymore.

He opens his eyes, takes a deep breath, before picking up his phone and hurling it into the lake.

The reflection of the moon shatters.

 

* * *

 

 

“Dean,”

Cas tries to ignore the way that sounds like a whimper, the way his hands fist in Dean’s shirt, pulling him nearer, clutching and tightening until he’s sure he must be leaving marks down Dean’s spine.

He tells himself that marks are good, real and tangible and evidence of feeling. And Cas needs that, needs it like he needs to breathe, like he needs Dean to surround him and push away everything that isn’t his light and warmth.

”Dean, please,” 

Dean’s already there, soothing as he noses along Cas’s throat, feeling his pulse fluttering beneath his lips as Cas stutters around a groan. He licks at the skin, follows the dip of his throat, kisses around the words that Cas struggles to say, the jumble of letters that’s always caught beneath where his teeth now graze.

“Dean, more.”

It’s closeness; desperate and needy by the time Dean sinks himself into Cas, wet heat surrounding him as they pant into each other’s mouths. Sweat-soaked skin slides together, fingers trace angles, over knees and under elbows; across the jut of jaw and cheekbone.

They stare at each other, inches apart as they chase release like it’s a riptide, strong and waiting just offshore, ready to come crashing in. Cas wants to drown in it, to let it carry him away in its current. To drown in everything Dean and not come up for air.

He wonders if Dean could taste the darkness inside of him when they kiss, if the bite of defeat is still sour on his tongue.

 

* * *

 

 

“Tell me about Dean, Cas.”

The scratch of pen on paper does nothing to soothe Cas’s nerves, the untimely beat of his heart that’s equal parts a reminder of not only the reason why he’s here, but the fact that he is here at all; breathing, living, alive.

He can’t help but wonder how many souls have passed through this office in the hope of finding themselves, only to lose themselves to the darkness again.

“What do you want to know?”

She shrugs, playful smile on her face that makes Cas want to lash out in anger.

“Something that you liked about him.”

Cas wants to say the weight of him. The comfort of his legs draped across Cas’s lap, the security of the arm he’d wrap around him at night. The warmth of his body as he stretched across Cas, protective and heavy and there, wrapping himself around him until he felt safe and loved.

He wants to say something about the way he climbed the stairs, how he always skipped the third from the top because he knew it creaked and he knew how much it rattled Cas. He wants to say something about how he would always leave his knife on the side after breakfast and get jam all over the counter. He wants to say that the sunrise wasn’t as beautiful anymore without Dean’s breath on the back of his neck.

But then, his whole life has been made up of moments full of things he’s wanted to say but hasn’t. That’s why he’s here, really; in a roundabout way.

He scratches a hand through his hair and sighs; deep and aching and longing and maybe Dean was right after all.

“There’s nothing I  _ liked _ about him.”

She raises an eyebrow, pen poised above the paper.

“Everything I feel about Dean is still in present tense.”

 

* * *

 

 

The house slowly became a home, walls were painted over, cupboards were filled, gradually the smell of decay was replaced with the scent of new memory.

But for every crack that was filled with love and laughter, there was a fissure being carved for the seeds of self-doubt.

The winter rolled in, cold and harsh and battering against the window frames, raging outside whilst they stayed quiet, him and Dean, howling on the inside.

The lake had frozen over, black ice in the dead of night; a looming threat that sooner or later would crack. A thousand shards tearing into the fragile peace that they had built.

“Why did you do it?”

Dean sits on the windowseat, face turned away, profile illuminated by the spill of the moon dancing across the ice.

“Dean, I-”

“No.” It’s sharp, snapped. The edges of restraint weakened by the storm brewing outside.

“It’s been almost a year, Cas. Almost a year and you’ve never even told me why.” 

Cas can only watch as splinters began to fracture, spreading across the surface.

“Is it me? Did I do something, make you sad somehow,” Dean pauses, defeated now, sighing wistfully as he turns his eyes downward. “Don’t you love me anymore?”

Cas looks at him, looks at the awkward angle of his knees, the scruff of his beard, the chewed down fingernails. Looks at the bits of him that are so endearingly Dean and tries to make his heart swell like it used too.

But he can’t.

“I don’t know that I know how to love anymore.”

Dean huffs a laugh, a quirk of his lip, mirthless and soulless before glancing up at Cas. The darkness in his eyes glints madly in the air between them.

“What time is your appointment tomorrow?”

“Four.”

And Cas can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t look, because the ice is breaking and he knew that this was where they were headed, that eventually he was going to pull Dean so far down that he’d have no choice but to let go.

“I won’t be here when you get back.”

Dean’s lip wobbles, his hands shake, but the lake outside remains frozen. Black ice; solid and unwavering in its resolve.

 

* * *

 

 

“What do you remember about that day?”

Cas remembers the way the world came back into focus like a razor to the brain. It was bright, too bright; too bright for eyes that were still waiting for the sun to rise.

“We were renting a house, out in the suburbs. It had a swimming pool.”

He remembers the way Dean’s face swam in front of him, the whisper of his name that was so quiet that Cas didn’t know if he heard it or if he just read it off Dean’s lips. They had quivered softly, hovering over him, and Cas had studied the lines, thinking about how he knew every crease and the taste of every groove.

“At the time, I remember wondering when it had stopped being enough.”

“When what stopped being enough?”

“Love.”

 

* * *

 

 

The sun couldn’t rise underwater.

The dawn couldn’t break and bring the new light of day and with it tug him away from the darkness.

It was silence, empty and full all at once; quiet and still pounding, suffocating in its embrace. There was nothing, and yet, everything. Splinters of light painting scars across his arms, stroking him with a warmth he didn’t want to feel. The pulse of his heartbeat, deafening him with a beat he didn’t want to hear.

It was thick, but not grasping. Just heavy with the weight of wrongdoings and misgivings and every thought he’d ever had was just a drop in the water above him.

The water wasn’t like the darkness, enveloping him in a cloak he didn’t want to wear. It was choice, freedom. It wasn’t sticky, holding him in its grasp and not letting him go. He could go, if that’s what he wanted.

But it wasn’t. It wasn’t what he wanted anymore. He wasn’t even sure what he did want. A moment, maybe. A moment to feel alive.

Because that’s what they said, those that had let the numbness take over. That it wasn’t until you were dying that you truly felt alive.

Maybe that was all he wanted, that moment. To just give in to the darkness until it consumed him so much that the only way out was to tear it apart. To bury himself in the layers of ink and ebony until everything was so dark that light was the only option.

It was a shock, really. When there was just, nothing. Nothing but the numbing of his hands, his bones going cold as his lungs burned and he didn’t feel alive. As his heart screamed and his head pounded and he didn’t feel alive.

And it was relief. To let the water rush in and cool across the fire that wasn’t burning strong enough. To close his eyes against the sun that couldn’t rise.

 

* * *

 

 

Cas stands at the window, alone; cigarette dangling from his lips.

The echo of Dean is gone, brushed out with the cold as the seasons changed. But Cas misses the smell of smoke, the way it would cling like a memory you could never shake. He misses the way Dean would steal his clothes, burying his nose in the collars before handing them back later that day with a faint hint of smoke tied in with his own smell.

He’s filled with such a sense of longing that he doesn’t know what to do with it. He wonders if he can just tie a knot in his throat and force it away, force away the building lump of ache and regret.

Cas stands at the window, watching for the dawning light, his phone clasped between his fingers. He’d had to get a new one, after the incident by the lake, and it feels foreign, missing a dent in the top that told tales of fumbling hands and a fourth date.

Birds skate across the water in front him, life slowly returning to the rolling lake. After months of winter, the ice had finally broken; giant icebergs drifting across the surface, trying to fit themselves back together into a shape that could never be made again.

Cas wonders what shape he and Dean would make now.

Melancholy seems to hang in the very air around him, filling the space where Dean used to be. And he wonders if all this time, if buried under the layers of darkness and sorrow, under all that hate and anger; it hadn’t been there all along.

It’s strange, he thinks. How one morning you can wake up and it’s like the world has righted itself, twisting roads leveling out until the plateau is laid out in front of you and you know you’re on the home stretch. How things you didn’t even realise were wrong suddenly seem so clear, like you’re seeing them for the first time, and you wonder how fogged the glass must have been for you to not notice before.

He moves automatically, fingers tracing a pattern he wasn’t sure he could ever forget, dial tone ringing in his ear a low thrum as his heart pounds. It’s lifting, vigorating, nervous excitement threading through him until he wants to laugh with it, shaky and uneasy because he doesn’t know what to do with the shaft of light that’s finally managing to pierce through all that darkness. He doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry and his hands shake as he clutches the phone, almost crumpling under the realisation that the only thing he does know is Dean.

The phone clicks, rolls over.

“Hello?”

 

* * *

 

 

“Cas, you there?”

Cas picks at a piece of lint on his knee as he sits at the kitchen table, fading light painting long shadows across the room. It’s still early, but it’s the depths of winter now, the sun barely having a chance to rise before it’s being swallowed by the night once more.

“Cas?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Cas’s voice cracks, hoarse from misuse after weeks of silence.

Dean huffs, and it sounds almost deranged. A high pitched laugh that isn’t Dean at all, and Cas wonders when was the last time Dean slept. Dean’s voice is croaky, like he’s smoked a hundred cigarettes and Cas doesn’t need to see his face to know that he hasn’t shaved in a week.

He feels smug, almost. That he’s done this. Made Dean this way. That he’s broken far enough to start tearing others down with him.

Because that’s the thing about self destruction. It doesn’t care who else gets burned in its wake, doesn’t care when the licking flames are covering you in a sense of victory.

“Jesus. Say something. Anything. You never talk to me anymore.”

Cas snorts bitterly. “You’re the one that left.”

“We’re not having this conversation again.”

“No. You wanted to talk so let’s talk. Let’s talk about how you just gave up on me. Let’s talk about how I needed you and you weren’t here. Let’s talk about how you fucking up and left and yet you still call and expect me to act like everything is fine when nothing is fine Dean. Nothing. Nothing is fine and you want me to talk to you about the fucking weather and our lives like there’s even a fucking point.”

Dean breathes. One. Two. Three.

“I never gave up on you.”

His voice is tight, clipped, and Cas knows he’s angry, knows that he’s pushed too far.

“You gave up on you. Not me! Jesus Cas, I left because I needed you to fight. Not for me, not for us, but for you. I left because I couldn’t save us both anymore, I couldn’t save you because you wouldn’t fucking let me. And I can’t save you if you won’t save you. So don’t tell me that I gave up on you, don’t tell me that you needed me when all you did was push me away.”

Cas wants to yell back, wants to tell Dean just how much he really needs him, how much he’d wanted him to stay but how he couldn’t find the words. Wants to tell him that how scared he is, how he thought he was afraid of the darkness but that really he’s just afraid of himself.

But he doesn’t say any of these things.

“Did it ever occur to you that I needed you to need me too?” Dean’s voice is small now, defeated, and that smug sense Cas had felt was replaced with a sinking sense of disgust and self-hate.

“I did need you. I do. You were the only thing holding me together. You were the only person saving me. And now you’re gone.”

Cas’s hands shake as he tries to remember how to breathe.

“No. No way, that’s not fair. You don’t get to do that! Jesus fuck, don’t put this on me Cas. You already tried once, I was there Cas, I was there at the old house the whole time. I was there and you did it anyway. So don’t say that I was saving you because I wasn’t. All I was doing was tearing myself apart trying.”

“I never wanted to drag you down with me.” It comes out as a whisper, as a plea and an apology wrapped into one; the truth of it burning like acid in Cas’s mouth.

“I know. And that’s why I left. Because you were, and I couldn’t let you do that. Not to me and not to yourself. I love you Cas, I still do. I always will. But I can’t love you enough for the both of us. You have to do it too.”

Cas breathes in harshly, shaking his head against the tears that are threatening to spill.

“You know I’m coming back, right?”

“Yeah,” Cas shrugs around the word, sarcasm bleeding into his tone. “When?”

Dean sighs, and Cas can’t help but think of Atlas with the world on his shoulders.

“When it’s light again.”

 

* * *

 

 

Cas sits on the jetty, feet tucked up underneath him, staring up at the sky.

It’s been awhile since he’s been out here, not since the ice had melted and the lake had swelled and writhed. He’d always felt safer, inside, behind the window. Away from the temptations of nature’s embrace.

But it feels good, to be out here again. To feel the wind in his hair and taste the salt and brine on his skin. To hear a sound that wasn’t his own heartbeat.

“Hey, Cas, you coming inside?”

To know that Dean was waiting inside for him.

“No. Not yet.” He looks back at Dean, feels the barest hint of a smile forming on his face. It’s soft, gentle. In need of nurturing to bring it back to full force. But it’s enough, for now. “I’m waiting for the sunrise.”

Dean nods fondly in understanding, before turning to go back inside.

“Dean, wait.”

Cas thinks about time, how no matter what it winds on endlessly, and how it doesn’t care if you fill it or waste it. And he thinks that maybe he’s done wasting time, trying to go back. Maybe it’s time to start moving forward.

“Will you sit with me?”

Dean’s smile is brighter than any sun Cas can remember seeing, and he wonders how he could have ever thought he didn’t need this.

Dean settles next to him. He’d asked Cas once, why he always liked to sit and watch the sun come up. Cas hadn’t answered then, too wrapped up in his own darkness to even acknowledge the concept of light. But he supposes that now, maybe, Dean would understand.

Would understand how much hope the dawn of a new day can bring.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I originally wrote and posted for a different fandom. My apologies to those who enjoyed it in its original form - I found that I was too attached to this work to leave it behind when I grew less attached to it's original characters. I don't really know the etiquette for reposting your own works after changing the characters to reflect new fandom interests, but I figured, fuck it. It's not plagiarism if it's your own work, right?


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